Hm, apparently I was the only one that this didn't hit squarely. It didn't leave me cold, exactly. I related to the character. But I guess my own foregone conclusion about poetry (i.e. that it has value if you feel it has value and who the hell cares what anyone else thinks) was what the story seemed to support in the end. I thought it was cool that poetry could heal, but also thought it was plausible that this would produce a class of poetic elite who would argue about their schools of poetry to the detriment of their patients because of the chasm between classes.
I thought the death was horrible, given the obvious results that the poem produced. The evidence out to speak for itself, but I'm not surprised that it didn't.
But then again, I am a low-brow artless person who doesn't understand modern poetry at all, instead loving the work of Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss, and Lewis Carroll.